Sewing diagonally across a square of material is used frequently in making quilts and other sewing projects. It is used to make half-square triangles, to join binding strips, to make “connecting corners”, and other connections of the fabric. It is commonly used to sew quilts made of squares. In the past, to accurately sew diagonally across a square required marking or creasing the square was needed. This method involves a significant amount of time for one that has many squares to mark and this method can leave residue from the physical marks.
A. Introduction of the Problems Addressed
When marking the diagonal, a sewer or quilter has to be careful that the mark will not permanently discolor the fabric or leave a residue on the fabric. Marks made with chalk, pencils, or wheels are purposefully easy to remove. In fact, sometimes they disappear before the quilter wants them to leaving the quilter having to re-mark the fabric or (worse) estimate where the stitch should be placed. Creasing (pressing) the diagonal eliminates the concern and worry of marks, but the crease is often “difficult to see” and even more “difficult to follow” when actually sewing. Having a crease also means that the fabric is not perfectly flat when being sewn. This may create a greater chance of inaccuracy. In addition, creasing is of “limited use” when making half-square triangles and is of essentially “no use” when quilting.
B. Prior Art
Historically, sewing and quilting aids or guides have been too large. In addition, they were at best marked and delineated with complex lines and indicators for use by the seamstress. Several devices have attempted to improve upon the needs for easy marking or indicating where the seams need to be placed on the quilting fabrics. In use, the prior art devices—complex in nature—were difficult to use and install with a sewing machine and therefore limited in use. The new SEW EASY GUIDE addresses these limitations and provides a solution to the stated problems.
Many sewing machines have a “quilting guide” accessory that can be used to sew parallel lines after marking only the first line. This is well-suited to sewing on a plain (non-pieced) fabric, but the typical “quilting guide” does not work well on a fabric made with quilt squares unless the squares are “exactly and precisely” square. Further, the quilting guide accessory is totally unsuitable for half-square triangles, joining binding strips, and making connecting corners.
Other sewing guides on the market, for example ones that attach to the sewing machine bed, can be helpful in sewing half-square triangles, joining binding strips, and making connecting corners, but only if a quilter is comfortable with guiding the fabric on top of the guidelines. However, these guides are not suitable for quilting because they attach to the sewing machine bed where the guidelines are covered by a quilt or sewing project.
For the many avenues and attempts to solve the needs to accurately and easily mark the quilts or facilitate the sewing, all the known prior art has fallen short of solving the problems.
There are but a few patents for sewing and drawing guides such as taught by the SEW EASY GUIDE. Examples of prior sewing guides or marking indicators begin with U.S. Pat. No. 647,339 issued to Thompson (1900). This teaches an apparatus for mechanical drawings. While possibly helpful to layout design shapes and patterns, the invention does not teach any use directly with a sewing machine or quilting apparatus.
A U.S. Pat. No. 846,006 issued to Bryson (1907) teaches the well-known combination protractor and ruler device. Here, a helpful layout device is taught but no mention of the embodiment or use as described for the SEW EASY GUIDE.
Another example include a U.S. Pat. No. 4,779,346 issued to Schafer (1988) which teaches a transparent, measuring device with markings on its surface. It is a much thicker device ad teaches no use with sewing or quilting machines.
Several devices have been commercialized that involve marking fabric for quilting and sewing. None teach a use with a machine where the guide is visible and on top of the fabric. The other devices known lie under the fabric and contiguous to the machine bed or are simply design layout devices. Examples include transparent rulers and guides from Pam Bono Designs—The Angler and Angler II; Great American Quilt Factory's Possibilities series of tools and devices; Checker Distributors Shape Cut device; Omnigrip rulers available through many dealers and distributors; Quilt Bus rulers; and finally, various Martingale rule and template devices.
None of the prior art teaches all the features and capabilities of the SEW EASY GUIDE device. As far as known, there are no devices at the present time which fully meet this need with as simple and few of components and superior operation as the present SEW EASY GUIDE device. It is believed that this device is made with fewer and less complex parts, of a more simple and durable design, and with much with much easier and improved method of use than any previous sewing guide devices. As far as known, there are no devices at the present time which fully meet the need for a quilting or sewing guide device as well as the SEW EASY GUIDE Device.